Rod Davis

New Zealand Olympian: 608

Olympic

1

Rod Davis
Born 1955

Rod Davis had a wonderfully varied career in yachting. He was born in San Diego in 1955, the son of a former submarine captain.

As a youngster, he began sailing a small Sunfis boat while living in Key West, Florida. After his family moved to Coronado in 1969, he sailed Sabots, the small sailing dinghies. Then he began sailing with various crews and boats at Coronado and San Diego Yacht Clubs.

In 1984 Davis, Robert Haines and Edward Trevelyan, representing the United States, won the Olympic Soling title at Los Angeles. They were so dominant they did not even have to contest the final race.

Davis was involved in the 1987 America’s Cup at Fremantle, helping the American challengers, but soon after moved to New Zealand. In 1988 Davis was employed by Michael Fay to be a coach in the Big Boat America’s Cup challenge. The following year he coached the New Zealand Admiral’s Cup team.

In 1992 Davis and Don Cowie sailed brilliantly in a field of 26 competitors to take the Star class silver medal at the Barcelona Olympics. They recorded finishing placings of 4-3-5-12-6-7-5 and, while they could not match high-flying Americans Mark Reynolds and Hal Haenel, they did well to edge out the strong Canadian and Dutch entries.

Four years later Davis and Cowie were unable to win a second Olympic medal, finishing fifth in the same event at Savannah. They finished with a total of 46 points, a whisker behind the fourth-placed Greeks, though well off a medal.

At Sydney in 2000 Davis and Cowie joined forces with Alan Smith in the Soling, where a controversial ruling deprived them of a place in the semi-finals. In the preliminaries they finished 3-3-10-2-7-3, and along with Norway and the Netherlands qualified directly for the quarter-finals.

Having won two races in the quarter-finals, it seemed they would progress to the semi-finals, but the Dutch appealed, claiming the wording of the rules was too vague, and the New Zealanders had to race off with them. The New Zealanders, after almost colliding with a passenger ferry before the start, lost by two lengths and were eliminated.

Davis, one of the world’s best match-racers through the 1990s, was also involved with the Italian and Danish sailing programmes. In 2004 he was the head coach of the successful Danish Olympic sailing team.

He maintained his links with the America’s Cup. He was the appointed skipper of Michael Fay’s 1992 challenge, though he was replaced late in the contest by Russell Coutts.

For the 1995 America’s Cup contest, he was John Bertrand’s helmsman on OneAustralia. For 2000 he moved on to coach Prada and he was Prada’s tactician in 2003. He assisted Team New Zealand with its 2007 America’s Cup campaign, but by then he was undertaking two important yachting roles - in 2005 he had been appointed Yachting New Zealand’s Olympic Director.